Hi! Welcome to the tenth (!!!) issue of The Good Side of the Internet. Super glad to have you here. For a brief run-down on what all the hullabaloo is about, please visit the About page for this publication.
This newsletter has been split into two sections. The first is external links that I truly adored, sometimes with my own little endorsements. The second is similar, but within Substack. There once was a third, compiling all the recommended readings on
over the last month, but I’ve discontinued the mini-TGSotI, so all links can be found in one place, right here.The ones with the little asterisk next to them come Highly Recommended (by me). Please do heed the trigger warnings if they’re present. For access to paywalled essays, feel free to reach out. I’m always open to discuss/debate/listen to your opinions about any of these links and would probably ascend to a higher plane of joy.
Happy reading!
TGSotI Reviewed
Is Taylor Swift Impossible to Critique?* | The Swaddle
Anything less than a perfect score has led to music critics getting doxxed in the past. How did we get here?
TGSotI Review: Covering the massive strength of fandom, the shrinking space for valid artist criticism, the truly terrifying reaction to any opinion that goes against a fan-base that’s so large, and ‘the absolutism of stan culture’, this is yet another Swaddle favourite. Concise, thorough, and well-structured. Highly Recommend!
Population.io (web)
What's my place in the world population? How long will I live? The journey of your life in numbers and dates!
TGSotI Review: Weird and wonderful. I have been informed that I am ‘… the 3,004,108,058 person alive on the planet […] older than 37% of the world's population and older than 39% of all people in India’.
Merchant of Death | Toronto Life (tw: suicide)
After Kenneth Law lost his job as a low-level cook at the Royal York hotel, he found another way to make money: peddling suicide kits on the internet. Now, he’s been linked to the deaths of over 100 people around the world—and their grieving families want justice
TGSotI Review: Deeply unsettling and engrossing, this investigative piece unfolds slowly and highlights the ease of buying a “suicide kit” online. It’s a difficult read, but sheds light on a part of the web that could do with more awareness.
What if this were easy?* | The Imperfectionist
No question, life can be difficult – but when I really honestly examine why I don’t always do the things I know I want to do, it’s often not because they’re difficult and I’d rather not experience discomfort. Instead, it’s because I’m adding an additional level of difficulty, in my mind, that isn’t objectively there at all.
TGSotI Review: I love when I read something that makes me go, “Oh! They put it in words!” They truly did put it in words with this one, about absolutism (if I can’t do it all, I don’t want to do it at all), being open to something being easy before you start it, and the discomfort of the previous that comes from the popular belief that important things must feel difficult and that effort is a measure of self-worth. Highly Recommend!
A GenderPunk Love Letter | The Rumpus
The punk show kick drum hammers like a piston as I sweat off a layer of cheap makeup in the middle of a mostly sitting crowd. This feels like an apt metaphor for being a former homeless queer youth. Against Me! is opening for Green Day and most of the people around me could not care less about the first band and its transgender frontwoman, Laura Jane Grace. They do not scream the lyrics to “Transgender Dysphoria Blues”; they do not jump to the beat of “True Trans Soul Rebel”; and they do not understand the connection between fear and makeup. With my all black lips and eyeshadow matching a leather vest bought at Goodwill, I am nothing but a blur of limbs and leather beneath the sweeping stage lights. It’s a relief, as I do not have the money to arrive fully formed as what most people would consider a woman—my transition is messy and must claw its way toward femininity, split-lipped and black-eyed. My transition counts quarters to afford fishnets.
TGSotI Review: A deeply personal account of trans woman’s homelessness, transition, and intersection of class and gender. Full of grief and full of life, all with the undercurrent of Against Me!’s discography, punk concerts, and dark makeup. It feels like an honour to be given this piece to read.
A Catalogue of Simple Pleasures | Are.na
watching a parent tend to their garden. smelling a specific scent from your childhood after years. small, lost things lying on the ground, waiting to be rescued.
The fog of grief | Aeon
The five stages of grief can’t begin to explain it: grief affects the body, brain and sense of self, and patience is the key
TGSotI Review: A scientific explanation for why whatever happens when we’re grieving happens, how it’s powerful enough to rewire the brain, and the variation in the duration of pain of loss.
the swiss cheese model of self-care (instagram post)
In-house Links
This section contains links to pieces from different Substack publications. Again, the ones with the asterisk are personal favourites.
How To Be from
- *
That’s a wrap for December ‘23! Feel free to make me the happiest person alive by reaching out to discuss any of it. For weekly poetry and song recommendations, plus a sometimes-nonsensical-sometimes-profound-sometimes-toopersonal article, we’d be happy to have you over at
.If you’d like, please share this with your friends. Or your mother. Or on your Instagram story that you share a Spotify link on once in six months. Or anybody who you think would enjoy it. I am deeply passionate about telling people what to read.
Thanks for reading, and see you next month!
Thank you so much for including working on purpose, I’m honoured (especially by the *!)
Will be reading all these recs too 💕
Thanks for the shout out!